Familypedia talk:People Template
Made some edits based on what I did in the article on Muhammad Al-Baqir. Please also note that in that article that there are some different ways to show a pedigree in different communities around the world. What I used in the above article is an interesting and common (and traditional) way in the Arab and Muslim worlds. It helps provide perspective just by reading the entry on one person. And in terms of a Wiki, it provides you a list of people that you can then create articles for. :DUser:IFaqeer—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 02:03, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC) Puzzling links What are we meant to do with the "??" links in the born and died paragraphs? Robin Patterson 22:08, 11 Jul 2005 (UTC) :As you might know, one can link to articles in the Wikipedia (in this case, about the years and places mentioned) by putting a link like this: Wikipedia:Brisbane which becomes Wikipedia:Brisbane. (And if you put a "redirection", you can change the text in the link: Brisbane or even lovely town to get Brisbane or even lovely town.) Try the links. :The idea is to provide links to places with background or related information. Things like what else was happening that year. Of course, as we start to gather information about years and places that is relevant to this Wiki but not to the Wikipedia, we can link to entries here.User:IFaqeer—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 05:58, 12 Jul 2005 (UTC) ::Thank you (I had forgotten how easy it is to link between MediaWiki installations), all is now clear. So let's put the basics of that instruction on the page above where people will be using it. It should include a note that the year only should be linked and that month and day go before the link brackets. Robin Patterson 02:31, 14 Jul 2005 (UTC) ::However, I think we would be better to plan for an early use of our own place and year pages for internal links, and on each such page we can have links to any number of related places, regions, suburbs, genealogy societies, registries, Wikipedias (in various languages), some Wikicities pages (with just "w:" - try [[w:calgary), years, decades, and so on. ::A year page, for example, will be in the category for its century and will contain a calendar and lists of events (particularly relevant, eg the opening or the destruction of a public record office) and births and deaths as Wikipedia does but just links to separate births and deaths pages when the lists get a bit long. It will link to at least the English WP year page and possibly to the English WP "xxx Births" etc if any, and to any other pages in any language that users wish to add. In case we haven't a discussion page for that yet, let's try Genealogy:Year page contents. Robin Patterson 02:31, 14 Jul 2005 (UTC) Good standardisation recently Thanks for the standardising of "comment" tag placement and removing unnecessary spaces. Actually, I haven't used this model for ages. When I'm creating a page for someone's parent, I copy the someone's page to start it off, because so much is the same (surname category half the time, century sometimes, source sometimes, and the WorldConnect links need only the ID number changed). Robin Patterson 22:44, 31 Aug 2005 (UTC) Recent better coordination of "machinery" pages As some readers know, we now have a sidebar link that says "Create a page"; it goes to a page that gives several friendly cautions (aimed at reducing later time-wasting) then tells people the best ways (in a sort of descending order) to create a page then invites contributors to come to this People Template if they want quick help with content. The introduction here emphasises that there are workable alternatives; it links to the Wigton Walker one (because there were no others I could think of when I wrote that!). Anyone's welcome to add others to that list. I agree with Bill that we want to keep this flexible while trying to get pages that link usefully and that may be amenable to programming for various sorts of automated displays. Some of the Wigton template may find its way into the standard one soon! Robin Patterson 07:17, 8 September 2006 (UTC) By 2007, Bill and others had produced inputboxes, where the user just types the page name and gets a sort of template preloaded. The "Standard" one - - apparently can't be exactly the same as Genealogy:People Template in every respect, because of nowikis and "pre" and other subtleties. But I will try to remember to keep their improvements in parallel. Robin Patterson 14:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC) How about a standardised real wiki-template for a person? Something Bill said in his last email copied to me set me thinking (as usual with Bill's contributions). (I don't remember seeing this idea here before, but I would be pleased to be updated if it has been mentioned.) How about a template containing the basic data for each person, so that: #it can be used on the person's ordinary page (and on his or her relatives' or "clan" pages if desired) #programming can be devised to extract the data and copy it to other necessary places (such as "x Surname" and "Births in 19xx") See what can be done with my late mother: Robin Patterson 02:24, 20 November 2006 (UTC) Lists of templates Why isn't the People Template listed on the All Templates page? Jillaine 15:00, 3 July 2007 (UTC) :Because it's not a MediaWiki software template, i.e. its name doesn't start with "Template:". I have a feeling those non-MediaWiki "templates" should be called something less ambiguous, e.g. "models". Robin Patterson 04:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC) Need to update Our subsequent developments such as category templates and info pages demand that some of this (including its page name) be revised. Discuss! Robin Patterson 05:51, 9 July 2008 (UTC) Partly done. What used to be the preload for the input box on "People Simple" pages (e.g. most of the 500-odd in Category:Created with Genealogy:People Simple Template) now displays just a message urging people to use the latest improvements in data input, a quantum leap beyond info pages. We have come a long way. Even our Founder's idea for what is effectively an Ahnentafel can be created more efficiently now. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 15:01, May 7, 2010 (UTC)